Update on The Boy

Thanks for all the phone calls and emails. We now have news.

The Boy is home and is now a floppy dog as he recovers from the anaesthetic. He’s got very sad eyes and is crying a lot We’re nasty bad people for putting him through it.

The vet showed us Jack’s X-rays – it was rather weird seeing the inside of our dog. The major cause of everything is the fact that his discs (that all vertebrates have between the pieces of their spines) have worn away. This means that the nerves which carry signals to and from those areas of his spine can’t do their job properly. hence, his tail doesn’t wag properly, and he can’t tell when he’s stopped peeing.

The blood in his urine was probably caused by an infection, which in turn has been caused by the fact that he doesn’t empty his bladder properly due to the nerves failing to tell him that the job’s not done yet. So the bit of wee that’s left is slowly getting infected. He’s got antibiotics to help clear that up.

So the good news is, we know what the problem is. the bad news is, there isn’t a cure. There is apparently a specialist place in Bristol (about 100 miles away) that could do some reconstructive surgery on the discs but we have to bear in mind the slim chance of success for that operation versus jack’s age and general well-being. I think that putting him through that would be detrimental at this stage.

poor boy.